


the falcon cannot hear

by FandomTrash24601



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Arguing, Bathing/Washing, Bathtubs, Broken Bones, Caring Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Ciri is so pure, Dehydration, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Friends to Lovers, Gentle Kissing, Geralt of Rivia and Yennefer of Vengerberg are Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon's Parents, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Apologizes, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Loves Jaskier | Dandelion, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, Hair Washing, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know exactly how magic works in-universe but (again) it's fanfiction so I'm taking liberties, I don't know exactly what they are but Jaskier isn't having a great time At All, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Torture, Insecure Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Kissing, Literal Sleeping Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Mentions of Starvation, Mild description of torture, Mind Manipulation, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Panic Attacks, Part-Elf Jaskier | Dandelion, Past Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Esteem Issues, Soft Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Starvation, Wheelchairs, but only a little because she's a bitch and we love her for it, dubcon medical (?) care, excessive stubbornness, he's still freshly traumatized so who knows what'll happen in the future, is magically walking around someone else's mind considered medicine, it is here!, mentions of dehydration, no beta we die like renfri, probably, so many broken bones, so much arguing for such a fragile man, so sweet, these tags are all out of order but I really can't be bothered to care, they weren't invented yet but magic exists and it's fanfiction anyways, wow there are so many tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24612631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FandomTrash24601/pseuds/FandomTrash24601
Summary: He may not like Yennefer, but he doesn’t want to be more of a burden than he’s been already. If he can convince them that he’s good, that he’s great, that he’s ready to take on the world once more, then he can be out of their hair. He’s just an imposition on the perfect little family they’ve got going on, and no matter how he feels he’s not going to homewreck them. Not when there’s a young princess involved.Title from the poem The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 142
Kudos: 1187





	the falcon cannot hear

Jaskier comes back to himself slowly. It’s difficult, like slogging his way through waist-deep swamp muck on the night of a new moon. His entire body aches, too, and that only makes him want to slide back into the safe haziness where he’d lain before. But he doesn’t; there’s something waiting for him, even if he doesn’t quite know what it is in his semi-conscious state.

He cracks his eyes open, squinting when he finds the room to be unpleasantly bright. There’s a ceiling above him. It's bright white plaster, with wooden beams running in the same direction as his body. His bed is pressed into the corner between two walls of a narrow room; the headboard is set against the shorter side. There’s a door just past the foot of the bed, and a dresser on the wall opposite. Two windows, one on either side of the centered dresser, eagerly let mid-morning light flood the room. The entire room is relatively bare of both physical items and character--everything is either white or brown, and there’s no sign of occupancy other than Jaskier’s presence in the bed.

The blankets are soft, he notices happily. The mattress feels like fine quality and not some prickly, rancid hay-stuffed monstrosity. So does the pillow, if he thinks about it. And the dresser looks expensive, some sort of plant carved in elegant curls across the drawers and up the sides. It looks like… lilac?

Yes.

Yes, that’s right, lilac.

Because it had been Yennefer who saved him.

The blissful warmth that’s been filling up his chest despite the bodily pain abruptly dissipates. Instead it’s as if a cold weight has been left upon him, stifling his breaths. He closes his eyes and tries to control his new, rapidly rising nausea. Saliva fills his mouth, and he determinedly swallows it down despite the horrible taste.

After what feels like forever, he thinks he’s finally calmed his stomach. He takes a couple more deep breaths, just to be sure, and then forces his aching body into motion to fold back the covers. They had been warm, and Jaskier shivers when the cold air hits him but refuses to climb back under them. He won’t give in. After so long, he couldn’t possibly give in. The shame of it would be too immense to recover from.

He’s wearing more clothing than he’d expected, considering. He has on a plain pair of dark brown breeches and a creamy white chemise that, although it’s a simpler style than he tends to prefer, is comfortable and does its job. Neither of the items fit him quite right, but they’re not so ill-fitting that he’s going to complain about them. Their looseness allows room for the plethora of bandages wrapped around what feels like most of his body.

He plants his feet on the ground and winces. The planks are cold beneath his feet, sending goosebumps across his entire body. Not to mention, he’s fairly certain that his feet had been broken at one point, and they still hurt.

They’d broken a lot of his bones. A lot of his body still hurts.

His legs tremble as he pushes himself to his feet and almost buckle, but he catches himself on the dresser--thank the gods the room is so skinny--and uses it to stabilize himself. He’s on the first floor, he sees when he looks outside, and behind the house is a small orchard. He wonders, still sleepy, if this is one of Yennefer’s home or merely a place where she’s made herself invited by virtue of being very powerful and very scary. If it is her home, does she sell the fruit for profit? Is that how she affords such luxurious clothing?

On creaking legs, he makes his way to the door. There’s a stairway immediately to the left, but in front of him and to the right stretches a sprawling, undivided living space. There’s a hearth, a kitchen, a couch and chairs, and a dining table, but no walls. His isolated room in the corner of the house stands out as an area surrounded by walls, although the other back corner of the house boasts a walled room of similar size. The entire house seems to be that same simple brown-and-white, but at least this open area looks lived-in.

Partially because there’s a person there, but also because there are living utensils.

Yennefer is sitting in a chair by the unlit hearth with a book in hand and a cup of tea set on a small table beside her. She spares him a glance, lifting her bright violet eyes from the veritable tome in her lap.

“Jaskier,” she says. The animosity he’d expect from her isn’t there, and he watches in confusion as she tucks a bookmark into her book and sets it aside. She’s never done anything on his account before. Why would she start now? “It’s good to see you awake and vertical. How do you feel?”

He could answer truthfully, tell her that his entire body throbs in pain--albeit dull pain--in time with his pulse. He could tell her that just standing causes his legs to burn and walking is hell on his feet, which he's certain are still at least a little broken. Come to think of it, he’s not sure he has all his toes. They might’ve cut one off, but he doesn’t remember and isn’t going to look to find out, not when he’s under Yennefer’s scrutiny.

“Just fine,” he lies.

“That’s bullshit and we both know it.” She tilts her head and raises one of her manicured eyebrows in one of the most condescending gestures he’s ever seen.

It’s at that moment that the front door flies open and a young teenage girl stomps inside. Her hair is a bright ash blonde, pulled back in a plait that makes her look exactly like a decade-deceased Cintran princess. Jaskier feels like he might be sick to his stomach at the sight of her; that’s Princess Cirilla of Cintra, it has to be, which means Geralt finally pulled his head out of his ass and went to claim her, which means--

Geralt, in all his assholish glory, steps into the house after her. Jaskier feels like he might faint, and puts a hand on the side of the stairs to steady himself. Geralt looks… He looks good. Tanned, healthy, _happy_. Happy with Ciri and Yennefer. Not that Jaskier expected anything different, after the mountain.

Fuck. As if he’s not in enough pain already, his heart seizes in his chest with such a wrenching sensation that he almost presses his hand over his breast to try to soothe it. He settles for clenching his hand into a fist and focusing on the pain the gesture causes.

“Yennefer,” Cirilla complains, “Geralt refuses to let me train with a real sword. He says I’m not good enough yet, but I’ve been training for _months_ with the wooden one.”

“I want you to be able to use the wooden sword fluently in your sleep before I’ll even think about allowing you to use a real one,” Geralt tells her. No sooner has he stopped speaking than Jaskier watches his nostrils flare. Jaskier curses Geralt and his Witcher senses as he finds himself pinned under a golden gaze.

“I’m going to have to support Geralt’s decision,” Yennefer tells Ciri fondly. “We’re trying to really train you, not rush you through it. That’s how people get killed.”

Jaskier drops his eyes to the floor and listens to Ciri bicker with the two of them. They sound like a real family, loving and tight-knit and not in need of a loudmouthed bard. He refuses to cry even as the floor blurs. This is nothing new, he tells himself, and certainly not anything he should be shedding tears over.

He’s just managed to blink his eyes dry when he hears Yennefer say, “Come on, Ciri, why don’t you have a cup of tea and calm down? Perhaps you can regale our guest with tales of how many bruises your sword skills have left Geralt with.”

“But he’s asl--Oh.” Jaskier looks up from the floor to find Ciri staring at him with round eyes, her mouth slightly parted. Suddenly it splits into a bright smile, and Jaskier is so stunned by the sight that he almost forgets to smile back. It’s only polite, after all. “You’re awake! You’ve been sleeping for days; I was starting to think you weren’t going to wake up at all.”

“Ciri,” Geralt says sharply.

She winces, as if just noticing what she’d said. “Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s quite alright.” Jaskier offers her another smile, genuinely amused despite the way that his entire body is too attuned to Geralt. “I didn’t think I was going to wake up, either.”

“I was about to ask you again,” Yennefer says, like she’d almost forgotten their first topic of conversation. Damn him and his mouth. “Are you sure you feel alright?”

“Seriously,” Jaskier lies again. “I’m fine.”

He may not like Yennefer, but he doesn’t want to be more of a burden than he’s been already. If he can convince them that he’s good, that he’s great, that he’s ready to take on the world once more, then he can be out of their hair. He’s just an imposition on the perfect little family they’ve got going on, and no matter how he feels he’s not going to homewreck them. Not when there’s a young princess involved.

Geralt makes a low rumbling sound deep in his throat, and Jaskier has to focus to keep his weak knees from giving out. What a stupid lovelorn puppy he is, letting his legs go all wobbly at a single noise from the object of his affections.

Yennefer hums in what sounds like disappointment--fuck, their mannerisms are already rubbing off on each other, being in the same house as them really might kill him--and crosses her arms over her chest. Her dress is long and dark and elegant, and while Jaskier normally has his own extravagant outfits to help his sense of inadequacy, he’s got nothing but some simple, ill-fitting clothes that don't even belong to him.

“I’m the one who healed you, Jaskier, even if you weren’t conscious for it. I know that your feet aren’t fully healed and it must be hell to even stand.”

Jaskier huffs out an irritated breath and looks away. He can feel a blush burning across his cheeks, reddening his ears and throat. How does she do that? How does she make him feel so tiny and stupid with just a couple words in that drawling voice of hers?

“Ciri, dear, why don’t you go check on the horses?”

He can feel Ciri’s hesitance, and he doesn’t even have to look to see the glances they’re communicating with. Eventually Ciri relents and leaves. It’s just him, Geralt, and Yennefer now.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says. It’s a painful sound.

He closes his eyes like they could act as a shield. “I was going to be so mad at you,” he whispers. “I was--I told myself so many times that when we finally met again, I was going to scream at you. To berate you for how you acted and demand you grovel before I’d even consider forgiving you.”

“And now?”

“I’m so tired.”

“So sit down,” Geralt urges. “Is Yen right? Are you standing on broken feet?”

 _Yen._ Not Yennefer. A nickname for a friend.

It’s all too much, far too much. He hides his face behind aching hands, but the quick motion disturbs his balance and he can’t quite catch it again on broken feet. The side of the stairs catches him when he falls, and he doesn’t try to stop the way he slides down the rough plaster. That would mean removing his hands from his face, and he can’t--He can’t. So he lets the wall tear up barely-scabbed wounds on his arm, embraces the physical pain in the hopes that it’ll lessen the emotional pain.

“Who cares if I am?” he sobs. More words follow, but even he knows that they’re disjointed and make no sense. It’s a thousand thoughts trying to cram themselves into one sentence.

“I do.” Geralt’s voice is too close, low to the ground and only a couple feet away. He’s probably crouching to be on Jaskier’s level, although Jaskier doesn't know why he’d bother. “Jaskier, I care.”

He shakes his head and tries to talk, to say “No, you don’t, you left me on that mountain,” but what actually makes its way from his mouth is completely unintelligible. How pathetic he must look!

“Jaskier,” Yennefer says. The rage that rises in him at the sound of her voice--soft like it’s never been and sweet like she actually cares--is astounding. “What do you want?”

What does he want?

He wants to be away from here, for one thing, where he’s boxed in by Geralt and Yennefer like some sort of skittish animal. He doesn’t even want to be in the same room as the two of them. He wants to stop hurting or to hurt so much that it kills him, whatever gets the job done. He wants to go back to that safe drifting place between unconsciousness and consciousness. He wants to use up the frantic energy swelling in his chest to strangle his lungs, to run into the orchard until he can’t run any farther and collapses from exhaustion for Nilfgaard to recapture. He wants to be in Oxenfurt again, a student who had yet to meet Geralt, full of energy and enthusiasm with a long life in front of him. He wants to be back in Lettenhove again, sitting on his mother’s lap before a raging fire in the heart of winter.

He wants to be curled up in Geralt’s arms in a warm and well-used bed. He wants that more than anything, wants it so badly that every fiber of his being lights up at the mere thought, but Geralt’s clearly with Yennefer and that will never happen so the pleasure turns to agony and he begins to sob even harder. He might make himself sick, although he doesn’t think he has anything to throw up.

“Oh,” Yennefer whispers.

The small sound is so innocuous, but he knows instantly that she’s in his head. His blood boils. The bile that he’d worked so hard to keep placid works itself back into a frenzy, frothing up his throat in a burning wave. He has to swallow it down before he can speak.

“And I don’t want _you_ creeping about in my head!” Jaskier screams. He scrambles backwards until he’s pressed into the corner between the stairs and the wall of his room. The frantic, careless movement is hell on his body, but he ignores it. The fingers of his hands shift upwards, gripping his hair tightly as he folds into himself. He can’t breathe. “I don’t want anyone in my head ever again! I’ve had enough mind-fuck sorcery to last me a lifetime, so fuck off! _Fuck off,_ get out! _Get out of my head!”_

“I’m out!” Yennefer shouts. “I’m out, Jaskier, I’m out!”

But he can still feel the remnants of her if she’s even telling the truth, indelicate footsteps stomping up and down his spine to fizzle unhappily. There’s buzzing at the base of his skull, and all he can see is the dark, dark eyes of the Nilfgaardian mage who’d helped in his torture. Her smile had been so empty. His body is shaking despite his attempts to stop it, shuddering violently. His sobs come with as much malice, tearing themselves from lungs that can’t fully expand. He can feel, distantly, that there are hands on him. They're big and warm. But he’s separated from his body, floating somewhere adjacent, and can’t respond to whatever the fuck is going on around him.

When his consciousness starts to drift towards that warm darkness, Jaskier eagerly follows it down.

He’s not sure how much time passes before he slogs his way back out of it. The effort required this time is significantly greater than it had been the first time, and he’s decidedly unhappy.

The light filtering through the window tells him it’s late afternoon. It might not even be the same day. He thinks it is, though; his whole body still aches and feels heavy. If he’d been unconscious for more than a full day, wouldn’t he feel more rested? He already longs to slip back into unconsciousness and only get out of bed when he wakes up and doesn’t feel bodily exhausted, but his stomach growls in protest.

His body barely hurts at all, even his still-broken feet, but everything feels heavy and too distant for his liking. Even though he’s up and moving, he still has to fight to keep his eyes open. Thankfully, the anxious adrenaline that rises as he opens the door does a good job at dispelling most of his sleepiness.

It’s just Ciri, curled up alone on the couch by the lit hearth. Her hair is damp, pulled back into a simple braid that slides over her shoulder onto her back when she turns her head to look at him. She offers a small, hesitant smile. He responds in kind, even though the last thing he feels like doing is smiling.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

“No,” Jaskier lies on instinct. Like a protest, his stomach grumbles immediately afterwards.

Ciri tilts her head and looks at him from beneath raised eyebrows, but there’s still a little smile on her lips. Jaskier reins in the snappish defense that rises to sit in his mouth. Ciri stands from the couch and approaches him with light steps, then takes his arm gently just above the elbow and directs him to a chair.

“Princess, you don’t have to,” he protests weakly. The chair is unfairly comfortable.

“I want to,” she says. “And I’m not a princess anymore.”

“There’s more to being royalty than a crown,” he tells her.

She wanders to the kitchen without replying. Jaskier lets his eyes wander to the lit hearth as he waits, watches the flames flicker and dance. It’s always captivating to watch fireplaces as they burn, heedless of the eyes that may be watching their entropic dance.

He only realizes he’s fallen asleep when he wakes up. Little fingers--Ciri’s, most likely--prod at his shoulder until he sits up straight and turns to her. She has some bread in hand, simple but sorely needed. Jaskier almost sighs in delight when he takes the food and realizes that the bread is fresh.

“Thank you very much, princess.”

“Would you like some tea?” she offers.

He considers the taste in his mouth before nodding, just barely. Ciri disappears once more with feather-light footsteps, and Jaskier can do little more than pick at the soft bread while he stares into the fire. How has he come to this point?

“Here,” Ciri says, and sets the tea down on a small side table. “Is there anything else I can get you?”

Jaskier shakes his head. “You’re too sweet, princess.”

“More worried.” Ciri retakes her seat on the couch, but ducks her head to look at her folded hands. Her voice drops to something little more than a mumble. “Geralt and Yen have tried to keep me in the dark, but I’m smarter than they think I am. I know that it’s my fault that you…” She sniffs.

“Princess, _no,”_ Jaskier says, horrified. “This isn’t your fault.”

“They were looking for me,” she protests, her voice high and squeaking with tears. “They wanted you so they could get to me. How is this not my fault?”

“Are you secretly a Nilfgaardian soldier who came up with the idea of capturing me?” he asks her. She scoffs, entirely indelicately, but Jaskier’s never been one for the eternal cleanliness of court life anyway.

“No.”

“Then relax. It’s not your fault.”

She’s still sniffling a little, but she’s stopped protesting that she’s the guilty party, so Jaskier will take it as a win. He doesn’t have the energy to do anything else.

For a long time they just sit quietly, listening to the fire. Jaskier picks at his bread, still heavily lethargic but in no pain at all. Although the tea has gone cold by the time that the bread has been shredded and digested, Jaskier doesn’t much mind. It’s clean liquid, and automatically miles better than the muddy water that he at times had to wring from his shirt during his captivity.

“Where’s Geralt?” Jaskier asks, halfway through devouring the tea with a series of long sips.

“Outside.” Ciri looks up at him with soft green eyes, like sunlit moss. Jaskier’s bizarrely glad that he can even come up with such metaphors, even if he doesn’t have anything to write or play with. “After you… He was very upset. He’s been with Roach ever since.”

Jaskier sighs heavily.

“Don’t worry,” she tells him. “He’s grumpy a lot of the time anyway.”

“I know that much.” Jaskier sips at his tea again. “I traveled with him for over twenty years.”

“You did?” Ciri blinks owlishly at him. “You don’t look that old.”

“I'm quarter-elf,” he says. “I didn’t get the ears or the magic, but I seem to have gotten the long life.” He offers her a smile. “I was there the night of your parents’ marriage, you know. I was excited enough to have been invited to play for Princess Pavetta’s betrothal feast; imagine how I felt at the end of the night--two marriages, a pregnancy announcement, and the inheritance of a Child Surprise.” He looks at Ciri, only to find her staring at him with wide eyes. “What is it?”

“I…” She frowns, but it’s confused and not hostile. “Grandmother invited a quarter-elf bard to play at a royal betrothal feast?”

“Uh, no.” Jaskier scrunches his face up as he tries to decide how to answer it. “She invited a bard who she didn’t know was anything other than fully human.”

“Oh.” Ciri doesn’t look comforted by the answer, and in fact only looks more stressed. He stays silent, letting her think; she looks like she’s going to speak again. After a long silence, his suspicion is proven right. “I’m sorry.”

“Princess,” he says fondly, “I’ve already told you--”

“No, this isn’t about Nilfgaard. This is about Cintra.” She looks up again to meet his eyes. Hers shine with tears. “I’m sorry for what my grandmother did to your people. I’m sorry for the genocide and the hatred, and all the death she caused.”

“Your grandmother’s actions were her own.” Jaskier shakes his head. “I don’t blame you for them; I’m not one to blame the child for the sins of their parents--or grandparents.” She’s caved in again, looking back down at her lap. He reaches out and pokes her shoulder, very gently, to draw her attention back to him. When she looks, he offers her a smile that he hopes is comforting. “If you’re still sorry, because I know regret and grief are tricky things, how about this: apologize by doing better. You’ll be the queen one day, when we scare those pesky Nilfgaardians off your soil, and when that time comes you can put in the work to undo that bigotry and make Cintra a safe place for elves.”

“I can’t bring the dead back,” she says. “I can’t bring Dara’s family back, or undo all the hurt my family has caused him.”

“Dara?”

“An elf. I would’ve died before I found Geralt if it hadn’t been for him, but once he realized who I was--who my grandmother was…” She sniffs, her eyes shining again. “I don’t blame him for his reaction. I just wish he had no grounds for it.”

“And I wish I'd had no grounds to fear for my life every time I played in the Cintran court.” Jaskier shrugs. “There’s no changing the past, princess; all we can do is go on and vow to do better.”

“Are you monologuing at the poor girl after the day she’s had?” Yennefer asks. She’s just emerged from the other back-corner room, which appears to be a bathing room if the humid steam is any indication.

“Ah, Yennefer, you vile bitch,” Jaskier says mildly, unconcerned about his company. She has to have heard worse in taverns. “What the fuck did you do to me? I’m far too calm about everything that’s going on, and I can’t feel most of my body. I do so love my body, Yennefer.”

“After the meltdown you had--” Jaskier winces. “--I cast a sort of spell on you. It keeps you calm, but also has the side effect of loss of sensation. Not that you should mind; if you can’t feel your body, you can’t feel the pain it’s in.”

Jaskier stares at her as she makes her way to the couch to sit beside Ciri. He stays silent the whole way, his mind moving slower than usual, and only once she sits down does he say, “And I’m _tired_. Was that you too?”

“That’s a mix of the spell and your body recovering from literal months of torture, bard.” She raises her eyebrows at him. “Magic can’t do everything.”

“No, I guess it can’t.” He stands on unsteady legs. “I’m going back to sleep before I fall asleep here and you two have to carry me to the bedroom.”

“Geralt’s stronger,” Ciri says.

Jaskier groans as he shuffles. “Oh, fuck no.”

He’s made it a good two-thirds of the way there when the front door opens and Geralt steps inside again. Unlike earlier, his face is not amused or even neutral; it’s drawn into a frown, his forehead all creased. Not even Roach, it seems, has been able to help Geralt today. And it’s all Jaskier’s fault.

They stand and stare at each other for an excruciatingly long time. One of the ladies--Ciri, he thinks--clears their throat after a while. It’s a prompt. Geralt moves with halting steps towards where Jaskier still stands immobile, only to stop a few feet away. The warmth of him, the too-familiar scent, it’s all _right there_ and yet completely inaccessible.

“I’m sorry,” Geralt says. The words sound like they hurt to say, and they hurt worse to hear when Jaskier knows that the apology is false.

“I…” Jaskier closes his eyes, sighs as he shakes his head. He doesn’t want to know what Geralt’s face looks like right now, how crestfallen or angry. “I can’t. Not tonight. Maybe… Just--not now.”

Flustered by everything, by his own inarticulateness and Geralt’s stupid handsome face and the fact that he can’t even feel most of his body, Jaskier turns and rushes back into his room. There, he tells himself, he’s safe.

But safe from what?

He’s certainly not safe from nightmares in the little wooden bed. He wakes from memories of his torture _(the first of the times they’d beaten him with a flaming cat-o-nine and he’d screamed himself silent, how they’d half-drowned him in freezing salt water to put the fire out and the stinging sea worked its way into every open wound on his body)_ shaking and sweating and screaming, only aggravating the wounds he can feel again with each panicked flail of his body. There are hands holding him down. He screams and screams until the sounds of gruff, panicked speaking register through his mental fog.

“It’s all right, it’s all right. Jaskier, you’re safe here. It’s over.”

Geralt.

It’s not instantaneous, but Jaskier focuses on Geralt’s voice and works himself down from a hysteric high until he’s just limp and aching and embarrassed. Geralt’s hands are still on him, so gentle despite their size and strength, and Jaskier’s really not sure if he loves or hates them. He’s been torn since the mountains, wounded and still loving. His traitorous heart... He _knows_ he hates that damned thing, at least.

“‘M sorry,” he mumbles. He’s refused to open his eyes, and isn’t sure if he even can. He doesn’t want to see Geralt’s face, doesn’t want to see Yennefer standing over Geralt’s shoulder. Although there isn’t a single part of him that doesn’t hurt, he makes an effort to roll on to his side and away from Geralt. It stings somewhere deep inside when Geralt lets him go.

“Sorry for what?” Geralt asks.

His voice is so familiar, so warm, so obviously concerned-- _He's not concerend, you fucking selfish asshole, just shocked that you would be so weak. Can’t you tell the difference between concern and shock, you stupid piece of shit?_ \--that Jaskier wants nothing more than to throw himself into Geralt’s arms and ask to be held. But he can’t do that because Geralt doesn’t want him, doesn’t even really like him. They probably only rescued him so that he couldn’t tell Nilfgaard anything that would endanger their daughter. _Their_ daughter. Jaskier has no place here except as an intruder.

He’s already shivering from the adrenaline crash and doesn’t even bother to stop the tears. They burst from him like hot blood from a severed artery, with significant enough force that his body jerks forward and he almost hits his head on the wall. _Sorry for what?_ like Geralt doesn’t know Jaskier’s offenses already. Like he hasn’t known since Posada.

Over his sobs, too loud even in his own ears, he hears snatches of hissed conversation.

“...supposed to...”

“...ralt, honestly...”

_“...know what…”_

“...big boy breeches…”

Jaskier comes back to himself and his poor battered body when Geralt reaches out again to put a hand on his arm. His breaths are coming in gasping staccatos, but he scrunches up his face and works to calm himself down. There’s no need to be so pathetic; it won’t earn him any pity points.

“Jaskier, hey.”

He sucks in a trembling breath. When he tries to speak he feels his throat spasm, and so he stays silent and holds his breath until it leaves him in a painful rush. His head is spinning like a top, so relentless that he feels unstable even though he’s laying down.

“Can you look at me?”

Jaskier curls in on himself, knees drawn up and arms tucked to his chest. Maybe if he can make himself small enough, he’ll disappear. He’ll never burden anybody again, never take up space and resources that don’t belong to him. The little bread he'd choked down earlier sits like cement in his stomach; he swallows the bile that tries to work its way up his throat.

“What can we do to help you, Jaskier?” Geralt asks.

It’s physically painful to hear Geralt’s voice sounding so soft, like a whip to the bottom of his feet. Jaskier barely resists the urge to clutch at his chest, knowing that it won’t do any good.

“Go away,” he croaks and means _Stay, please._

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” _No._

“Okay.” The bed shifts as Geralt stands. Jaskier bites his lip until it bleeds to keep himself from crying out for Geralt to stay.

“Come on,” he hears Yennefer whisper.

Jaskier keeps his eyes closed, keeps himself curled tight like it’ll keep him safe from Geralt and Yennefer and their eyes. He manages to keep himself silent until the door shuts behind them, at which point he allows himself a single, barking sob.

His skin is so cold that it burns, but he knows that blankets won’t help so he doesn’t bother to tuck himself back underneath them.

In the morning, it’s his throbbing bladder and sticky skin that drags him unwillingly from bed. Each step is agony, but he grins and bears it and bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds. Geralt might be able to smell the blood, but it’ll hardly be distinguishable from the rest of his wounds.

“Ah, you’re not dead,” Yennefer greets him. She’s sat in front of the fire again.

“Not for the universe’s lack of effort.” He forces himself to the dining table, making sure to keep his steps sure and smooth. Unaffected. “Listen, where’s an outhouse?”

“Outside,” Yennefer says, entirely unhelpful. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll let you out on your own. How painful was it to walk from your room to the table?”

“Not painful at all.”

“You’re a shit liar.”

“I’m a performer.” Jaskier scowls. “It’s quite literally my job to lie.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Yennefer sighs. “Just…sit down and let others help you. You’ve been tortured, and your body is never going to recover if you keep pushing it.”

“I’m already sitting,” he points out impudently.

“You think you’re funny.”

“I _know_ I’m funny.”

“Jaskier?” Ciri’s voice is small and soft where it floats from the bottom of the stairs.

He closes his eyes and focuses on keeping his voice light when he replies, “Good morning, princess.”

“Why won’t you let us help you?”

He sighs and tries to think of a reasonable answer. He can’t say “Because I don’t want to intrude on the lovely family you have going on here” any more than he can say “Because I don’t trust Yennefer farther than I can throw her in my current state” or “Because I’m so desperately in love with your pseudo-father that it hurts, and I need to get away from him so that I can give him the blessing he wants more than anything.”

In the end, Geralt answers for him. He hadn’t heard either of them come down the stairs, but his deep rumble is unmistakable when he says, “Jaskier’s never been one to know his limits.”

Bitter fury rises until Jaskier is choked silent, the sharp metallic tang sitting between his teeth and scraping his palate raw. He knows his limits. He knows his limits damn well: he knows how much vodka and mulled wine and mead he can have before he loses his wits (permitted the mead is _mead_ and not almost-water), just how long he can walk on a sparse few hours of sleep, how many days he can go without a bath or a hot meal before he starts to grow truly irritable, how long he can go without “relieving” himself before he gets jittery, how long he can keep up a dead sprint for, how many jigs and crooning ballads he can sing before he starts to threaten his voice. He just doesn’t know how to handle the convoluted situation he’s found himself in.

“I just want to use the fucking bathroom,” he whispers, and drops his head into his hands. His eyes sting where they’re hidden from the light, from Geralt’s sharp gaze. “I want to use the bathroom, and take a bath--or at least wipe myself down with a wet cloth--and then I want to go back to bed and not see or talk to any of you until fucking kingdom come. Except maybe you, princess. You’re a darling.”

“How about this,” Yennefer suggests. “You let one of us push you around in this, or you let Geralt carry you around. Your choice, because you’re not walking on broken feet.”

Jaskier drags his face from his hands to peer at “this,” only to find himself looking at a cushioned seat with wheels at the bottom of each leg. In addition to the seat, there’s an extension on each of the two front legs, set at an angle. He blinks.

“What…?”

“You sit in it, and put your feet on the paddles. Then someone pushes you around.”

“I’m not doing that,” Jaskier says, appalled.

“Then Geralt’s going to carry you.”

The reaction is physical. Jaskier shakes his head frantically, although it only causes a spike of pain. “I’m not doing _that.”_

“Then you’re taking the chair.”

“This is ridiculous,” Jaskier growls. “Why do you give a fuck? Why do either of you _care_ if I walk on broken feet or not?”

“Are we not allowed to be worried for the person who was almost killed because of us?” Yennefer demands. “You’re denser than I thought you were, bard.”

“You hate me!” Jaskier shouts, and slams his hands on the table. The action sends blinding pain up his arms, so bad that he almost has to stop his tirade just to gasp for breath. “You’ve always hated me, from the moment we met!” He pushes himself to his feet and whirls around to face Geralt, who damnably has Ciri tucked into his side. “And you! You told me that you wanted me off of your hands! Well, Destiny granted you that blessing!” He storms towards the door on legs that almost buckle with each brutal stomp, but is brought up short when Geralt speaks.

“And yet, here we are.”

“You don’t get to say that,” Jaskier spits. His voice is low, because if not he’ll burst into tears and all the impact of his shouting will disintegrate. “You don’t get to use those words, Witcher.”

He makes it halfway around the house, moving around to the back corner where his room sits, before Geralt catches up to him with a quiet, “Jaskier.”

Jaskier refuses to look at him.

“Jaskier.” It’s louder this time, but still he moves forward on shaking legs. He grits his teeth to fight back tears.

Geralt doesn’t bother speaking a third time. He just sweeps Jaskier off his feet and up into the air with warm, muscular arms. It’s the most wonderful and awful thing Jaskier’s ever experienced.

“Put me down!” he demands, wiggling. Geralt just holds tighter, and it causes something deep in Jaskier’s chest to seize painfully. “You fucking brute, let go of me!”

“You’re hurt,” Geralt says. “I’m not going to let you make it worse out of spite.”

“Spite?” Jaskier shrieks, turning to look at Geralt despite the hot tears he can feel burning behind his eyes. _“Spite?”_

“What else is this?” Geralt demands. His grip is tight but his hands are gentle, and it hurts. It burns something that Jaskier had thought--had hoped--he’d buried deep enough for safety.

“You fucking ass!” His voice breaks on a sob, unable to hold out in the face of Geralt’s golden gaze. He drops his head into the crook of Geralt’s neck to hide his tears, but his lack of vision is no hindrance when he begins to beat a fist futilely against Geralt’s broad chest. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Because I’m sorry.” Geralt comes to a halt, ignoring Jaskier’s pathetic attempts at physically deterring him. “This is my fault, and I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to be here,” Jaskier sobs. The twisting and the squirming and the hitting all hurts too much, and he finally allows himself to go limp. One hand is only kept on Geralt’s chest by way of two aching fingers tucked loosely into the collar of Geralt’s shirt. “I know when I’m not wanted; I just want to leave you two alone, but you _won’t let me leave.”_

“There’s so much wrong with what you just said,” Geralt grumbles. “Jaskier, we want you here.”

“Only so I can’t betray you two and get Ciri captured.”

“What? Jaskier, look at me.”

Jaskier shakes his head and keeps his face very firmly buried in Geralt’s neck. He smells like home, still, and Jaskier curses his traitorous heart even as it bleeds.

_“Jaskier.”_

“Just let me use the gods-damned fucking bathroom, Geralt, _please!_ I don’t want to have this conversation, and I don’t want you carrying me, so for the love of--of--oh, of I don’t fucking know what--at least let me relieve myself before you go about yelling at me!”

“I don’t want to yell at you,” Geralt sighs, but he starts moving again. “I just want you to listen to us.”

 _“Us.”_ The word tastes poisonous.

“Yes, us!” Geralt huffs and, more gentle than Jaskier would expect, sets him down outside the outhouse.

Jaskier turns his face away from Geralt. He can’t let Geralt see how weak he is. Sure, he can smell it and hear it, but Jaskier will be damned if he lets Geralt see just how distraught he is.

It’s frustratingly painful to use the restroom--standing hurts, moving his hands hurts, his bruised genitals hurt. His mood is worse when he emerges from the restroom than it was when he went in, if that’s at all possible.

“If you pick me up--” he starts.

“Jaskier, please.”

Even by his own admission, he’s always been weak, and he doesn’t think he’s ever heard Geralt use such manners. He closes his eyes, bracing. “What?”

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself further.” He sighs. “Why are you so determined to refuse any help? I thought we’d established that was my job.”

“Oh, and he jokes!” Jaskier snaps. “I told you why, Geralt. I’ll get out of your hair as soon as you let me.”

“If you’re so determined to leave, I won’t stop you.” His voice is always deep and raspy, but maybe he’s choked on spit because it’s so much raspier now. “You’ll be healed enough to leave sooner rather than later if you let us help you, though.”

“Fine,” Jaskier mutters. “Fine, you ass. You win this round.”

“This isn’t--” Geralt cuts himself off, then utters a disgruntled, “Hmm.”

Jaskier keeps his eyes closed and lets Geralt scoop him up. He feels so pathetic that it burns his lungs, but he doesn’t know what else to do. Geralt is determined, for some odd reason, to care for him.

“Why won’t you look at me?” Geralt asks.

“Because fuck you, that’s why,” Jaskier chirps.

“What happened to you?” It’s a demand. Jaskier clenches his jaw, wraps his fist in the back of Geralt’s shirt. He uses the pain to ground himself so he can keep his mind in the here and now, even as it fights to return to the cell he spent the past few months in.

“I was tortured,” he says shortly.

“I couldn’t gather that from the fact that there’s not a single unharmed part of you,” Geralt replies dryly. “I’m asking what happened to _you,_ Jaskier.”

“I was tortured,” Jaskier repeats, refusing to think about the woman with the empty eyes.

“Hmm.”

He almost frowns when they step back inside and out of the warm sun. He does open his eyes when they step inside, though, not willing to face Yennefer’s ridicule. She’s still lounging in a chair by the hearth, and Ciri is sitting on the couch. Ciri’s face, young and sweet, is pursed into an expression of concern.

“Are you alright?” she asks Jaskier. “We heard shouting.”

 _Of course they did,_ Jaskier thinks bitterly. Because the day has just started and can’t possibly get any worse.

“Jaskier was being ridiculous,” Geralt says. “He’s not, now, I think.”

“Very eloquent,” Jaskier snarks as Geralt sets him down in the other chair before taking a seat next to Ciri on the couch.

What a pair they make, so alike in coloring. If Jaskier didn’t know half of what he does, he’d think that Geralt was Ciri’s real parent. She certainly acts like it, wrapping her arms around one of his and leaning her head against his shoulder. He moves like he’s not even thinking when he presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“What’re you reading?” he asks, gesturing to the book by her side with his free arm.

_“A Nice and Accurate Treatise on Lesser Vampires.”_

“Hmm. I’ll have to test you afterwards.”

“Do you really, though?” Ciri asks, clutching him tighter and arming a pair of truly lethal puppy-eyes. Geralt’s lips twitch, like he’s trying not to smile.

Jaskier looks down at his knees, choking on something unpleasant. Geralt never smiles. Or at least, he never smiled around Jaskier. He can count on one hand the amount of times he’s seen Geralt smile, and it took him years to earn the first one. Jaskier bites his lower lip until it bleeds and tries his best not to hate Ciri for being cute and charming and linked to Geralt by destiny, like Yennefer is and Jaskier isn’t.

“What’s wrong?” Geralt asks.

Jaskier licks the blood from his lip and looks up at Geralt. He’s frowning, now, when he’d just been smiling, and it’s all Jaskier’s fault for being weak. Why does he have to be so petty? A traumatized teenaged princess is no competition. He’s a grown adult, for fuck’s sake.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he lies.

Geralt gives him a very, very unimpressed look. “You’ve just bitten your lip bloody and you reek of pain and distress.”

“I have since I was first captured, thank you for noticing.” Jaskier raises his eyebrows. “Nothing’s wrong, although I do need a bath. I’m sure I reek in more tangible ways to the non-Witcher inhabitants of this abode.”

“You absolutely reek,” Yennefer confirms. “There’s only so much that perfume and incense can do.” She meets his gaze, cold purple. “But you can’t bathe on your own.”

“No.” Jaskier says. “No. I’m bathing by myself.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt says.

“I’m _bathing,”_ Jaskier insists, “by _myself.”_

Yennefer smiles. It’s not a pretty one. “If you can make it there, then by all means go ahead and bathe yourself.”

Glaring, Jaskier forces himself from the chair, but he only makes it halfway to the door before he has to stop and gasp for breath. All the stupid stunts he’s pulled today are catching up with him--the stomping and the squirming and the slapping.

“Motherfucker,” he hisses at his traitorous feet, which refuse to move.

“Mind your language,” Yennefer comments mildly. She hasn’t looked up from her book. “Geralt?”

“Jaskier,” Geralt grunts as he gently unwraps Ciri from his arm and moves to a standing position. “I’m helping you bathe.”

“Like hell you are!” Jaskier snaps.

“Can you do more than just sit in the water?” Geralt asks. “You’re still wounded, Jaskier.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he demands. “It hurts to breathe, you fucking oaf. It hurts to stand, and it hurts to sit, and it hurts to lay down. I just want a thrice-be-damned fucking bath so that I can go back to my room and go to sleep, because that’s the only time when I _don’t_ hurt!”

 _Push him away, push him away,_ something dark and twisted chants. _He can’t hurt you again if you hurt him first._

But Jaskier doesn’t have the words. For once, he has no clue what he could say if he opens his mouth. There’s nothing decipherable sitting hot and heavy on his tongue, just screams that taste like blood. He swallows them down and feels his stomach twist in revulsion.

He lets Geralt lead him to the bathroom with a broad hand on his lower back, scalding.

The room is lavish; Yennefer is clearly fond of her baths, and it earns her some points in his favor. The floor looks like marble and the tub is set into it on one end of the rectangular room, the side that doesn’t contain the door and the intricately carved benches for clothes and towels. Jaskier lets out a low, appreciative hum. There are soaps and scents and oils tucked into the space between the tub and the two corners of the room that it secludes. Steaming water already fills the tub, gentle white wisps rising up and dissipating into the thick air. It’s probably enchanted, knowing Yennefer.

“Do you need help getting undressed?” Geralt asks.

Jaskier clenches his jaw. “...Yes.”

He doesn’t say anything, thankfully. He just eases Jaskier’s borrowed shirt off before sliding the breeches gently over aching hips and down trembling legs. He unwinds Jaskier’s bandages, the whole lot of them, kneeling to provide a brace when he moves to the bandages covering Jaskier’s legs. He doesn’t look at Jaskier’s sorry nether regions, which Jaskier can only hope still function properly. He even, like a gentleman, offers a hand for balance as Jaskier steps into the tub.

The water is just on the right side of too hot, and Jaskier all but melts into the rim of the tub. There’s a folded cloth there when he sets his head down; Geralt must have grabbed it when Jaskier wasn’t looking. All the tension works itself out of his bones like pus from an ugly, swollen pimple, and before long his mind has drifted off to the best place it’s been in a very long time. He can’t even find it in himself to be angry at Geralt and Yennefer for refusing to let him bathe alone anymore.

“Do you have a preferred scent?” Geralt asks. Jaskier’s head already feels stuffed with cotton, but in a good way. It takes him a while to even realize he’s been asked a question.

“Not really,” he mumbles. “Maybe lavender. Or chamomile.”

“Whatever you want.”

He snorts. “‘S been a long time since I’ve heard anything along those lines.”

Geralt doesn’t reply. Jaskier listens as Geralt lathers up a wet cloth, bracing himself for the contact that will follow. Geralt has never been one for softness, and they traveled together for long enough that Jaskier knows his method of washing: quick, efficient, and harsh. The first time Jaskier saw Geralt bathe himself in a proper bath instead of just rinsing off in an available body of water, he’d actually winced.

But the touch that comes at last is slow and tender, little circles that work methodically across Jaskier’s chest. He lets out a low hum of pleasure and relaxes further, losing himself in the gentleness. When’s the last time someone touched him like this? Before his kidnapping, surely, but how long before? A day? A week? He can’t even guess. Whenever it was, it’s been altogether too much time since he could relax into touch instead of shying away from it.

“Just relax,” Geralt says. “Trust that I’m here to help.”

“Help?” Something twangs deep in Jaskier’s chest, and his voice comes out bitter. “I didn’t think that was your strong suit, unless you got to slaughter beasties in the process.”

“Jaskier.” It’s a pained whisper that strikes deeper than it has any right to.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, letting his eyes fall shut as Geralt moves from Jaskier’s torso to one of his arms. “That was rude of me. You’re doing your best.”

“What am I doing wrong?” Geralt asks at length. “I’m trying, but I don’t know--”

Jaskier waits for an answer as Geralt finishes one arm and moves to the other. He’s fighting the syrupy lethargy that pulls at him, curious that Geralt is actually trying to put words and feelings together for once.

“What don’t you know?” he asks when it becomes clear that Geralt intends to be done with speaking.

“How they broke you.”

“With whips and chains,” he says with a cheery tone. “What else?”

“No, not--Hmm. Not what they did to you. What broke inside of you.”

“My ribs.”

“Jaskier.” It’s almost a true groan of irritation, but Geralt’s hands never grow cruel.

“They just made me realize some things, is all.”

“Realize this, then. I’m sorry. My behavior on the mountain was…inexcusable. I had no right to take my frustration out on you, and you’re well within your rights to hate me for the rest of your life. All I ask… I’d just like another chance to prove myself a worthy travel companion. If you’ll have me.”

“What is it with you and throwing my words back in my face?” Jaskier says, but he keeps his eyes closed because tears will spill if he opens them. “It’s not your fault, Geralt. Don’t worry.”

“No, it is my fault.” Geralt reaches into the tub and, with tentative hands, pulls one of Jaskier’s legs up so it can be washed. “I chose to invoke the Law of Surprise. I made a vague wish. You were just there.”

“That’s just it,” Jaskier whispers. It seems they’re really having this conversation now, when Geralt is well on his way to soaking-wet as he gives Jaskier a bath. Geralt is fully clothed, and not only is Jaskier naked but splayed open like a twopenny tart. “I was there. You kept telling me to leave, and I always ignored you, and I--I thought that was fine.”

“It was,” Geralt says. “You read me right. You’ve always read me right, even when I hated it.”

Jaskier doesn’t really have anything to say to that. He keeps his eyes closed, basks in the feeling of kind hands on him. There’s a very real danger of him falling asleep like this. He can’t remember the last time he felt so loved, even if that feeling of love is nothing more than a misconstruance by his weak heart.

When Geralt finishes washing his body, he taps Jaskier’s collarbone and murmurs, “Can you sit up? I need to wash your hair.”

Jaskier forces himself off of the side of the tub, blinking heavy eyelids. His lungs are pleasantly full of lavender-tinged water vapor, and his muscles are truly relaxed for the first time in months. He’s curious to see how long he’ll sleep for after this, if he’ll even wake up at all or if his mind will decide that it’s just too nice where the light can’t reach him.

Geralt places a gentle hand above his eyes as he pours water over Jaskier’s scalp. Jaskier lets out a low moan, too content to stay silent, and goes almost fully limp. He manages to stay conscious enough to be aware of Geralt’s movements, though. He slides to the edge of the tub so that Jaskier is securely held in the bracket of his thighs, and even though he’s rolled up his breeches as far as they’ll go he still gets them wet. He doesn’t seem to mind, and Jaskier supposes it makes sense; when he routinely finds his paints soaked in monster gore, a little water really is nothing.

The soap and scented oils that Geralt rubs into his scalp are almost too relaxing. Overwhelmed by how considerate Geralt’s fingertips can be, Jaskier finds himself listing towards one of Geralt’s strong thighs, where he further soaks the fabric. These aren’t fashionable leather breeches, but soft linen that doesn’t cling spitefully when wet.

He’s drifting so far away from his physical body that he really can’t hear much of anything, but he thinks he imagines one of Geralt’s rare, genuine chuckles. It’s earthy and sweet and something that Jaskier--selfish and forward and too loud--will never earn, but he lets himself imagine for a moment that it’s just for him.

By the time Jaskier comes back to himself, mind reconnecting with body, he’s out of the tub. He sits between Geralt’s spread legs, leaning back against his chest. The two of them together sit on the floor in the corner created by the benches. He’s dry, and so is Geralt, who is taking great care as he wraps a bandage around Jaskier’s right forearm. Jaskier blinks blearily down at his legs, which have been rebandaged without his knowledge, and the small towel tossed over his lap in an attempt to hide his bruised dignity. He peers at his toes, and is unsurprised to see that two from his left foot and one from his right foot are, in fact, missing.

“‘M missing toes,” he pouts. His mind is still fuzzy. Not having toes is a minor inconvenience, sure, but it’s okay because he has Geralt tucked warm against his back and handling his arm like it’s a sacred artefact.

“Yes you are.” Done wrapping the forearm, Geralt takes Jaskier’s hand in his. “But you still have all your fingers. Though you’d need a lute to play anything.”

Jaskier stares at their clasped hands in amazement. For all that they’re the same height, Geralt’s so much larger than Jaskier. “You hate my playing,” he whispers, not sure what else to say. The steam hides them from each other, from the world. The steam is safe.

“No.” There are gentle lips pressing against the top of Jaskier’s too-bony shoulder, hardly a kiss except for the fact that Geralt doesn’t _do_ this kind of stuff. “No, Jaskier, I love your playing. Except for maybe _Toss A Coin;_ people need to know when to let a song rest.”

“Hmm. Proud of that one.” Jaskier blinks lazily, still captivated by their hands. “It’ll never rest, not until you and all your brethren are greeted with open arms in every town across the whole bloody Continent, I promise you.”

“Why?”

Jaskier makes a questioning noise.

“Why did you ever approach me, all those years ago? Why did you follow me? Why… Why did you write it?”

“I’ve always been a sucker for men who looked like they could snap me in half.” He huffs quietly. “Not much of a preference for women, but guys? Oh, they’ve gotta be big. I approached you because I found you devastatingly attractive.” He could have lied, he knows, but the floor of a steamy, enchanted bathroom is no place for falsehoods. Not when they’ve spent decades dancing around honest speech. “I followed you in part because of that, and in part because I was genuinely in need of a muse.”

“But why write it?” Geralt asks again once Jaskier has grown silent. So they're ignoring the whole attraction thing, alright. “Why not turn me into a brave, nameless knight? Plenty of other bards have written great songs about Witchers without revealing who the hero is.”

Jaskier folds his arm across his stomach, bringing Geralt’s with it. This way, he can almost pretend that Geralt is really holding him.

“Knights are overrated.” He tips his head back against Geralt’s shoulder and lets the white hair he loves so much tickle him. “I tried writing about knights, you know. Real ones. But they’re all…” He shakes his head, at a loss for words. Cowardly isn’t right, but then again, it’s not wrong either. Corrupt and selfish are in the same boat. “I was searching desperately for a real hero, a knight like the ones in the tales. But the most noble, moral person I could find wasn’t a knight; it was you. I _had_ to write about it.”

The back of the door is a mirror. Jaskier stares at them and their fogged reflections. He looks like a shell of a man, hollowed by starvation. Although he’s not skeletal--not anymore--his cheeks are sunken and his eyes are dark. When he breathes, he watches his stomach sink inwards past the cage of his ribs. His beard has been shaved, thankfully. It had been ratty and patchy, and he’d hated it with a burning passion even when he had far more pressing matters to be concerned with. His hair is long, although not as long as Geralt’s, curling under his jaw and tickling the back of his neck. It drips onto his chest, not yet dry.

In contrast, Geralt looks hale. He’s not so lean as he once was, obviously subsisting on the proper amount of food for an athletic, genetically mutated man of his size. His cheeks are flushed with health and heat, his undereyes as normally colored as Jaskier assumes they ever get. His soft hair pulled away from his face in his usual style, although it’s disheveled in that attractive way where the shorter strands fall from the clutches of his leather tie to frame his face. There’s not a single bandage in sight, and why would there be? He’s been here with Yennefer, training Ciri instead of hunting kikimores and alghouls.

Jaskier swears that he feels his heartstrings twang. He closes his teary eyes and bites his lip, determined not to cry. Geralt already has to put up with his starvation-skinny frame and gaunt face and the smell of his pain; he doesn’t need to bear witness to more of Jaskier’s damned tears.

“Jaskier.” Geralt presses his lips to the side of Jaskier’s neck, and he cringes away from the touch. His mind is spinning so wildly out of control, pulled back to that most dreaded room--the one with the mage with the empty eyes, the one where she’d disillusioned him. “Jaskier, please.” He’s sitting on the floor naked, trapped in the arms of a man who doesn’t want him back, and he’s also in that cold, cold room with the cold, cold woman. “Hey, can you hear me?”

 _They don’t miss you,_ he can hear her say. _Why would they miss you? Just tell us where they are; it won’t hurt you. They won’t even have to know it was you who told us, if you don’t want them to know._

He’d tried with everything he had to avoid her, but she was in his head. She would always be in his head, her slick touch and her strong steps and her wretched voice.

 _What’s holding you back? Your love for him? He doesn’t love you back, Julian, you know this. He loves her. He tied_ her _to him, not you. He slept in her tent, not by your side. There was never room for three, and you were always the extra, the unwanted._

He’s shaking. He thinks he might be gasping for breath, too, but he’s not sure. It doesn’t matter if he is; none of this is real. Oh, and doesn’t the knowledge cut like a knife? He’s still in that cell, still under the mage’s control. She’s in his mind, fabricating what he wants to see--a healthy princess, a Geralt who apologizes and says that he enjoys Jaskier’s playing. How could he have been so stupid? Geralt _hates_ his playing, he _knows_ this.

 _Weak,_ he chastises himself. _Weak and wanting. The only fool here is you._

“Jaskier, can you hear me?”

He can hear him, sure, but it’s not actually him. A high whine tears itself from his throat as he begins to thrash. The pain isn’t real, but the hurt is, and oh gods how he hurts. Anything over this! He’d take the flaming cat-o-nine in a heartbeat before this delusion.

“Fuck. Yennefer!”

He’s still, he thinks miserably beneath the all-consuming panic, fucking _naked_.

“Jaskier, deep breaths,” Geralt says. “With me, now.”

And he can feel Geralt’s chest moving, he can, bare beneath his back, but it doesn’t do any good. His vision is spotting and blurring at the edges, his body shutting down rather than letting him think through things rationally. Or perhaps it’s the illusion warping as the mage draws this charade to an end and pulls him back into the real world.

 _Fancy that,_ she’d sneer. _A Witcher, more noble than a knight? Julian, please. Be reasonable._

His ears are ringing. He can’t hear anything except the mage’s voice--what she has said, what she will say, how she’ll sound when she berates him--but then there are fingertips on his forehead and everything goes blessedly dark and quiet.

He wakes up in that damn bed again, and based just on the light it’s late afternoon. Again. So she’s maintained the illusion, kept him trapped. Good for her for knowing what works best against him, he thinks bitterly.

“You’re awake.”

He starts, not having noticed the little chair and its violet-eyed occupant drawn up by his bed. She doesn’t look condescending, for the first time since he recalls waking up here. She just looks tired, and a little bit guilty. Her hands are folded too neatly in her lap.

“Fuck off,” he whispers. “Let me out.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t consider this,” Yennefer sighs, and rubs at her temples with her manicured fingertips. “I was so focused on your physical injuries that I didn’t consider what they might’ve done to your mind.”

“You’re not real,” he tells her, feeling oddly calm. “Yennefer doesn’t ever admit to mistakes. She’d bury herself in them first.”

“You think you know me.” She shakes her head. “Jaskier, I can help you. But I’ll need to be in your mind to do it, and I want your consent first.”

He sighs. “You want my consent? Now? After you’ve flipped my brain upside-down looking for Geralt and Yennefer and Ciri? I’ve told you, I don’t know where they are.”

“Jaskier, I’m not my sister.”

“The fruit orchard is a nice touch,” he mumbles. His eyes are so, so heavy. Even if the bath wasn’t real, his mind-generated body doesn’t seem to know the difference. “Very homey. Not Geralt’s style, homes, but who knows what he could be getting up to in these uncertain times?”

“Do you need to talk to Geralt? Is that it?”

“No.” Jaskier chuckles. “No, that’s not it. He wouldn’t agree to it anyway. He hates me, left me on that mountain--I know you’ve gathered that much from your rummaging.”

Not-Yennefer curses softly. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” she says. “I hope you can forgive me for this, Jaskier, but I think it’ll help.”

There are fingers on his forehead again and he sinks into a murky place he’s never been to before. It’s his bedroom, the one from his childhood when he was his father’s little viscount and his mother’s little darling. There’s his bed, and his wardrobe, and his desk, but it’s all broken and cast in gray half-light. His sturdy bed frame is split and his mattress has slid half onto the floor, the richly colored blankets a dingy shade underneath thick dust. Cobwebs hang from every corner, unnaturally thick like the spit of a kikimore. His wardrobe has been toppled to lay on the stone floor, and the top of the desk is cracked and bowed.

“Oh, Jaskier.” Yennefer sighs. She wasn’t there a moment before, but she’s sitting on his broken bed with her legs crossed delicately and her head held high. Her painted lips are parted, eyebrows wrinkled. “What did they do?”

He knows this is a dream because nothing hurts, so he looks at Yennefer and smiles and says, “I couldn’t let them get to Geralt,” like it’s a real answer.

His gaze strays to the windows, too thickly pasted with dust to see through. He approaches on steady, unbroken feet and pushes a window open with fingers that don’t ache. Blustering cold sweeps into the room, which was cold in the first place, but he can only gape at the world outside. It’s not just winter, he can tell; everything is dying. There’s no color anywhere except the blazing, flaming purple of Yennefer’s eyes.

“Why you?” he asks her. “I could understand if it was my mother, or Geralt, or even my father, but what…” He gestures vaguely to her. “What are you doing here?”

“Can I look around?” she asks softly.

“Go ahead.” He nudges the fallen wardrobe with a booted foot, which he knows has all five toes. “It’s not like you’re real. Just don’t go turning into a warg or something, because I really don’t feel like dealing with another nightmare.”

“I promise I won’t turn into a warg.” She pushes herself off of the bed. The dust is undisturbed, Jaskier notices.

“I think I’m dying,” he comments, still staring at the place where Yennefer’s skirts should’ve disturbed the dust. “None of this is right.”

“No, none of this is right at all,” Yennefer agrees.

“I wish I had the magic instead of the long life expectancy,” he says.

“Oh?”

“I mean, what use is a long life expectancy if I’m going to die in a dirty dungeon somewhere? At least I could’ve fought, with magic.” He lets out a harsh puff of breath. “That’s what I get for having watered-down blood, I suppose.”

“Magic tends to come with a steep price for quarter-bloods.” Yennefer doesn’t look up from where she’s rummaging through his desk drawers. He doesn’t know what she’s looking for; there’s not much there. “It’s overrated.”

“So says one of the most powerful sorceresses on the Continent.” Jaskier throws himself onto his bed with a groan. The bed frame creaks dangerously and dust explodes around him, leaving him hacking and wheezing. “Oh, fuck that. Fuck this.” He tosses an arm over his eyes. “Dying sucks. It couldn’t be a meadow, somewhere, with someone a little more pleasant?”

“You’re not dying.”

“Take a look out the window. Tell me that isn’t death.”

“It’s certainly not healthy, but it’s not beyond saving.”

Jaskier ignores her. She’s clearly, somehow, the positive side of him--What’s left, that is. He’s a realist now.

“Do you think Geralt will ever find out about me?” he whispers to the ceiling. “Or will he just think I’ve vanished into obscurity? Not that he’d care all that much, really, he--”

“He would care,” Yennefer snaps, her voice low and dangerous. “Don’t you _dare_ insinuate otherwise.”

“What else am I supposed to insinuate?” Jaskier complains. “He blamed me for every problem in his life and then told me in no uncertain terms to fuck off.”

“And he regrets his actions more than you could know,” Yennefer argues. “He would be beyond devastated if you were to die. Which you _aren’t going to_ , you melodramatic ass. I swear, I’m--Oh!”

Jaskier lifts his arm from his face to peer curiously at her. She’s standing from her crouch, a pressed buttercup pinched between two fingers. Despite the fact that she’d just been lecturing Jaskier, she turns to him with a bright smile.

He opens his eyes, back in that room with an orchard view, and knows in the depths of his soul that this is real. Yennefer draws her hand away from his forehead, looking strained but thoroughly pleased with herself.

“Oh my gods,” he says. “That was really you. In my head. Not just some weird dream.”

“What an astute observation.” She pushes herself to her feet and brushes her hands over her skirt, although there’s nothing on them to brush off. “Now you can either lay here and go back to sleep or take the wheelchair.”

For the first time in recent memory, Jaskier feels awake. He pushes himself carefully to a seated position, all too aware of the bandages that Geralt had wrapped him in with soft, steady hands. Geralt, who had pressed a kiss to his ugly, bony shoulder. Geralt, who had _held his hand._

“Wheelchair,” he says. “Yennefer, I need to--”

“Speak with Geralt, yes.”

Jaskier maneuvers his way into the wheelchair with too much effort and begrudgingly allows Yennefer to push it. Geralt is the only one in the main room, wearing brown leather breeches and a thick white shirt. It’s clearly new; white clothes don’t stay white in the monster-hunting business. He’s standing in the kitchen, peeling carrots with frightening focus and excessive force.

“How is he?” Geralt asks. Jaskier blinks. How lost in his own head is he that he hasn’t noticed that Jaskier’s in the room with him?

“Fine,” Jaskier answers.

Geralt’s entire body goes rigid for a moment. He sets the carrots and knife down, but doesn’t turn away from the counter. He’s breathing hard.

“I’m…awake, now.” Jaskier says when Geralt stays silent. “I know this is real. Even if I have some other stuff to work on getting over.”

“Why wouldn’t this be real?” Geralt asks, his voice gravel-rough.

Yennefer sweeps past Jaskier and into the kitchen, where she shoos Geralt away and picks up the knife. “Why don’t you two go speak somewhere more private? And remind me never to let you skin carrots again, Geralt; you take half the carrot with it.”

Jaskier stays quiet as Geralt pushes the wheelchair outside. The sky is just beginning to burn orange, but Geralt takes them around back to the orchard where the sky is just an ever-darkening blue. He pushes Jaskier far down a row until the house vanishes into the distance and it’s just them and the trees, and then he comes around to the front of the wheelchair and sits down hard on the ground.

“Why wouldn’t this be real?” he asks again.

Jaskier focuses on Geralt’s sturdy boots, where his breeches vanish into them. It’s not noticeable when he wears his normal black clothing, but it’s startling now if only because it’s foreign.

“They had a mage,” he says quietly. “She had no qualms about diving into my head, rummaging around. She saw… everything. Used it to turn me against myself, make me doubt things I thought I knew and know things that I had previously doubted.”

“And the thoughts she put in your head made you think that this couldn’t be real?”

“Not necessarily.” Jaskier sighs. “I… When I was panicking, I started hearing her voice in my head, and I just…latched on to the idea that this was just an illusion.”

“Why did you panic at all?”

Jaskier bites his lip--at this point, he’ll bite it clean off before dinner. “That damn mirror. And…” He knows how Geralt will take this, but he can’t just leave it out. “...the gentleness. The kissing.”

Geralt frowns. All this time away, and Jaskier can still read him as clear as day; he’s confused as to what Jaskier means, and still feeling guilty.

“I was looking into the mirror and I just… I look awful. I’m all bony, and I’m covered in all sorts of wounds even if they don’t require bandages, and I’m so weak I can barely walk, and my hair’s grown out but it’s all knotted and awful. And then there’s you, looking like a fucking deity. How am I supposed to compare to that on my best days? And you were being so kind-- _too_ kind. I’m not meaning to get between you and Yennefer, I’m really not, and I just--It was too much, so I panicked.”

“Get between me and Yennefer?” Geralt shakes his head. “The only thing between me and Yennefer is Ciri. We’re nothing more than friends, if we can even call ourselves that. We raise Ciri together, and we don’t kill or sleep with each other, and that’s that.”

“Seriously?” Jaskier makes the mistake of asking.

“Yes, seriously.” Once upon a time Jaskier knows Geralt would’ve snapped the words, but he doesn’t now.

“I’m not…”

“You’re not what?”

Jaskier forces the words out, however recalcitrant his throat may be. “I’m not a burden on you two? Not an intruder of the little family unit you three have going on?”

“Of course not.” Geralt reaches out to grab his hand again and, like before, Jaskier can only stare in shock. “I want you here, Jaskier. Ciri wants you here. Yennefer… Well.” His lips twitch. It’s a smile, like the one he gave Ciri, but he’s looking at Jaskier this time. “She doesn’t want you to fall back into Nilfgaard’s hands, at the least.”

“Why--” He has to stop and clear his throat when his voice tries to strangle itself with overwrought emotion. “Why are you doing that? You--And earlier, with the kisses.” His words drop to a raspy whisper. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry.” Geralt pulls his hand from Jaskier’s with all his superhuman speed, and Jaskier has to fight to keep from reaching out after him. His hand freezes without Geralt’s wrapped around it. “I’ve been…taking liberties, and you haven’t even forgiven me for what I did on the mountain.”

“Take all the liberties you want,” Jaskier says. “I think I forgave you the second I saw you. If not, I definitely forgave you about halfway through the bath.”

Geralt offers a smile, teeth and all. “I’ve never seen you like that. It was…nice.”

“I told you that washing your hair was very much not selfless of me,” Jaskier agrees.

With a hesitant hand, Geralt reaches out to take Jaskier’s hand again. But his jaw is tight, his golden eyes glimmering with something unknown as he looks at their tangled fingers.

“All the liberties I want?” His voice is hushed, creeping about beneath the boughs of the orchard surrounding them like it doesn’t dare to take flight and make itself widely known.

“I thought you wanted nothing,” Jaskier teases. “But yes, Geralt, all the liberties you want.”

Jaskier almost regrets his words a moment later when Geralt leans in and presses a soft kiss to swollen, bruised knuckles. He has to bite his lip again so as not to immediately burst into messy tears, but the tears don’t have to fall for Geralt to smell them.

“Jask?”

“Is that--” He has to look away, to fix his eyes on a gnarled low-hanging branch in order to compose himself. Where has his eloquence gone? “Do you mean that?”

“I’m not good with words,” Geralt begins hesitantly. He looks about as nervous as Jaskier feels. “But I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, Jaskier. _More_ than that. More than earlier, after the bath.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you’ve wanted to kiss my lips?” Jaksier asks through a laugh.

Geralt ducks his face away, towards the ground. “I might be.”

“Come up here, love.” Jaskier tugs gently on Geralt’s hand, hardly exerting any force at all, but Geralt moves as easily as a feather. He goes to his knees, where he’s just a little lower than Jaskier is in his seat. From here, it’s no hardship for Jaskier to lean forward and press their lips together.

Geralt’s lips are chapped, but they move softly and almost hesitantly against his own. Jaskier can’t help but to smile, because for all the pining and imagining he’d done he hadn’t managed to get the feel of them right, how they’d slide so perfectly into place and how sweet they’d be. It’s not a revelation; it doesn’t feel like a second conjunction of the spheres, or a rush of magic, or the touch of destiny. It just feels like coming home.

When they part, Geralt tips his forehead to rest against Jaskier’s. The hand of Geralt’s that isn’t holding Jaskier’s comes up to wrap around the back of his neck, like a brace. For several long moments, they just breathe each other’s air and bask in the heat of the other’s body.

“I told myself for so long that I couldn’t ever expect to get this,” Jaskier murmurs.

“I’m sorry I made you feel that way.” Geralt’s thumb runs back and forth over Jaskier’s neck, the motion almost as disarming as the gentle washing from earlier. “I love you, Jaskier. And I never want to leave you again. And… And I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not being there.” Jaskier feels Geralt’s forehead wrinkled as he frowns. “For not even knowing that they--they were--”

“How could you have known?” He pulls away just far enough to press a kiss to Geralt’s forehead. “We hadn’t spoken in so long, and you had a child to be concerned about.”

“It’s unforgivable,” Geralt protests.

Jaskier pulls his hand from Geralt’s only to press his strong jaw between both of them. “You put too much on your own shoulders, my love. Not even you can do everything.”

“I can try.” Geralt’s jaw twitches. “I can protect you and Ciri, at least. I can do that much or die trying.”

A breeze winds its way through the orchard, and Jaskier shivers. He’s clad only in another pair of borrowed clothes, and they’re too thin for him as the sun sinks and the temperature drops.

“You’re cold.”

“Yeah.”

“Come on, then.” Geralt stands and moves behind the wheelchair so he can push Jaskier back to the house. The ground is bumpy, but he can tell that Geralt is going his best to keep the journey smooth and it just about melts his heart.

“Ah, good, I was about ready to go out after you.” Yennefer is setting out four bowls of what smells like beef stew; Jaskier’s stomach rumbles at the scent. “Sit down. Jaskier, you only have broth, but it should be enough.”

“I’ll take it.”

Geralt wheels Jaskier up to the table, to the place where there’s a missing chair, and then sets a gentle hand on his shoulder. There’s a bandage there; Geralt keeps his touch feather-light, barely touching Jaskier at all, but his hand radiates heat.

“Are you still cold?” he asks.

“Just a bit. I’m sure the broth will warm me right up.”

Geralt steps away, and Jaskier thinks he’s going to sit down but is shocked a moment later when Geralt wraps a blanket around him, burritoing him in such a fashion that the blanket is secure but he can move his arms to access the broth. The gesture is so touching and so public--under Yennefer’s smirking eyes--that he feels himself blush bright red. Ciri at least has the decency to smile down at her stew, but Yennefer has never had decency a day in her life.

“Thank you,” he mumbles as Geralt settles down at the table.

“Of course. Is there anything else I can do?”

“No, no, I’m fine for now.”

The four of them tuck into their meals. Geralt has about three servings in the time it takes Jaskier to soak up about two-thirds of the broth with fresh bread and drink the other third. By that time, the warmth of the broth has settled into his bones and he feels more solid than he has since before his captivity. He settles back into the wheelchair, fighting to keep his eyes open; as much as he would love to go to sleep, he’s content here.

“Jask?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you tired?”

“Very much so.”

Geralt stands and makes his way behind Jaskier. “Let me help, then.”

“You’re too sweet,” Jaskier murmurs. “Goodnight, princess. Goodnight, witch.”

“Goodnight, Jaskier,” Ciri says.

“You’re welcome,” Yennefer says.

His room is dark, only occupied by dim shadows and vague shapes. Jaskier waits as patiently as he can while Geralt lights a lantern set atop the dresser, but his breaths come quicker the longer Geralt takes to bring light into the room. Without his vision, he can’t tell his room apart from his old cell.

“Jask, what’s wrong?” Geralt asks as the lantern flickers to life, casting deep orange across the walls. In the low light without armor and with his shirt partially unbuttoned, he looks like something from Jaskier’s wildest, wettest dreams.

“I…” He could lie, but Geralt can fucking _smell_ biological reactions. “I don’t like the dark. My cell was dark for most of the time; I just had to…sit there, trapped in my own head.”

Jaskier watches something sweep across Geralt’s expression, there and then gone, and briefly wishes he had a Witcher's nose so he could try to figure out what the hell Geralt's thinking. He looks agonized, but that feels hyperbolic.

“I’ll make sure to keep a light going,” Geralt says.

Geralt turns away then, and while he busies himself with pulling back the blankets on the bed and beating the pillow back into a state of puffiness, Jaskier de-blankets and pushes himself out of the wheelchair. His body protests quite fiercely, but he makes it to a standing position on his own. By then, Geralt has finished with the bed and guides Jaskier towards it with hands that hover just above his skin. It’s shockingly considerate of him, allowing Jaskier to move on his own while still being there for support.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Jaskier mumbles as Geralt pulls up the blankets to cover him.

“I want to take care of you.” Geralt strokes hair from Jaskier’s forehead with gentle fingers, and Jaskier can’t help the goofy smile that spreads across his face.

“Then come here.”

Jaskier watches Geralt in the low lamplight, how his hair shifts like a pale curtain when he tilts his head and how his eyes really, truly glow. He’s so handsome that Jaskier might cry.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

Jaskier feels foolish, but the careful attention Geralt has been paying to him is a source of emboldenment. “Climb into bed with me,” he mumbles.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You couldn’t.”

“I absolutely could.”

“Please, just…” Jaskier doesn’t have the energy for this. “Just come here.”

Geralt doesn’t put up any further protest and climbs gingerly under the covers, like he’s trying not to crush an infant rather than jostle the wounds of a full-grown man. It’s ridiculously endearing. He ends up on his side, curled slightly towards Jaskier so that Geralt’s knees press into his legs.

“I’m not going to break.” Jaskier fumbles about for a moment, but manages to find Geralt’s arm and tug it over his chest.

“I don’t--”

“It’s nice,” Jaskier interrupts. “You being here. The weight. It makes me feel safe.”

Geralt brushes his lips against Jaskier’s forehead in a barely-there kiss, but doesn’t say anything more. He even, the motions tentative at first, begins to rub his thumb back and forth where it rests over Jaskier’s collarbone.

“Just stay with me,” Jaskier murmurs. The reassuring weight of Geralt’s arm and the colossal heat put out by his body is more soothing than any incense or spell, tugging him quickly towards unconsciousness. For the first time in a long time, though, he doesn’t want to drift away. He fights to keep his eyes open a little longer, to bask in just how safe he feels. “I’m not perfect. Not fixed. But... it’s better with you.”

“Then I’ll be here for as long as you want.”

“Forever.” Jaskier’s not sure if the word is even comprehensible; he can feel that his lips barely moved at all.

But Jaskier swears, in the moment before he succumbs to sleep, that he hears Geralt respond with a “Forever” of his own.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This was going to be short, once upon a time, and then grew to be more than 14k. Oh well. Please consider dropping some kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this! They're little bites of chicken soup for my frazzled soul. And if you haven't read The Second Coming, consider doing so; it's a really wonderful poem!


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